This invention relates in general to machines for handling flexible sheets, and more particularly to a machine for arranging such sheets in bundles.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 311,348 of James R. Wood, filed Oct. 14, 1981 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,531,343, and entitled Machine and Process for Stacking and Bundling Flexible Sheet Material, shows a machine for causing signatures that are delivered from a printing press to rise out of a shingled condition and assume an edge-standing condition, all while they are conveyed along a path that leads away from the press. While the signatures are in the edge-standing condition, the machine further consolidates them and segregates them into bundles. The latter aspects of the machine are somewhat complex and not as refined as the former, and it is the latter, that is the mechanisms for consolidating and arranging the edge-standing signatures in bundles, to which this application is primarily addressed, although an improved apparatus for causing the sheets to assume an edge-standing condition is also considered.